when you’re old enough to get a hangover just from staying up late

I have a zero tollerance policy for alcohol when I know I will be driving the same day or early the next.

It is far easier to just say "no" from the start than trying to calculate and estimate what would be an acceptable ammount at what time to be able to drive.

Yesterday when I drove home from NYE at my parents, road conditions were terrible, it snowed, the council had not cleared it as I drove home (understandable), and I felt my car loose grip a few times. On roads with a limit of 70km/h I drove 35-40, and on a road with a limit of 90km/h you could not drive any faster than 60, I have excellent winter tyers, but it took all my stone sober concentration to get home safely, if I had had any alcohol, trying to drive home would have been utterly reckless, to be fair, it was borderline reckless when as I drove home sober, but it was doable.

I'm a heavy drinker but screw it, sharing my non-alcoholic version of Irish cream here:

• 100ml whole milk; boiling hot
• a cinnamon stick
• some pieces of orange skin, just the yellow part
• drinking chocolate powder; I use 3tbsp
• instant coffee powder; I use 2tbsp
• 400g dulce de leche [see note]
• 200ml half-and-half
• vanilla extract
• 300~500ml whole milk, again; keep it cool

1. Simmer the cinnamon stick and orange skin in the whole milk for 10 minutes or so. Then throw them away, they're just to add flavour to the milk.
2. Add the other ingredients, in the sequence listed, making sure to incorporate well one ingredient before adding another. Taste it and add more or less milk as you want, if it tastes too strong add more milk.
3. Transfer to a bottle, chill it. Serve it on the rocks.

NOTE: you can buy the dulce de leche if you want, but it gets more expensive than just making it at home with the same amount of sweetened condensed milk.

I see people share tips of what type of mocktails to get

I like blended virgin raspberry margaritas on the sour side, and will generally order one if I see one on a menu.

Honestly, I should probably just figure out a recipe to make them myself, as they're nice to slowly sip, and they'd be nice to have at home too. Never did get around to making one myself.

I wouldn't say I "appreciate" it as it leans towards being subjective, but I'd say it seems to make more sense for alcohol to be refused. What goes on in a person's mind when they're using the world's oldest form of psychiatry to reduce their faculties which are themselves implied to be the issue as a response to the weight of life?

The arrow must go up.